


Between

by Sanj



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Internal Monologue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-05-01
Updated: 2001-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-20 15:51:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanj/pseuds/Sanj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm here for both of them. They're both stubborn and sulky and officious, both freakishly competent, both with skin I want to lick, mouths I want to kiss and suck and bite, warmth I want to discover. A puzzle piece can sometimes fit in more than one place; I don't know where I belong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between

When you get right down to it, decisions aren't my strong suit. Maybe it goes back to Two-Face and his gallows trick ... maybe earlier than that. Most of the important steps in my life have been taken because there wasn't another choice.   
  
Usually because Bruce wanted it that way.   
  
And again he wants it a certain way and again I'm about to give in. Which might be best.   
  
She's beautiful. I'm not talking about the muscles under her freckly shoulders or the way her hair falls down her neck, or that look she gets in her eyes when she's by-God-damned that she's not going to lose. I'm mean she's beautiful like soul beautiful, bone-marrow deep ... deeper. Anyone who wouldn't want Barbara --  _is_  there anyone who doesn't want Barbara?   
  
It's taken me three years to chisel my way through the ice. She's trying. She wants me, she says -- she just needs time. And God knows I'd be a fool not to wait, and hope, and keep trying.   
  
And yet.   
  
I seem to have a thing for hopeless causes. For stubborn jaws and incredible shoulders.   
  
For bats.   
  
I've been in love with him -- well, not forever, but let's say at least a decade... and they still have to check my ID when I want to buy cooking wine. I guess it was probably a crush at first, or hero worship -- but the truth is, when you're living with a guy who's trying (nominally, some days) to be your guardian while he balances a multi-billion dollar empire and a life-or-death crimequest from his basement --   
  
Let's just say the feet of clay became evident pretty quickly. Bruce and I have seen each other at our worst -- battered and defeated, yeah, but also demanding and arrogant and stubborn as mule shit. That's both of us, I guess. But he can really put his back into being an asshole.   
  
Strangely, those are the moments when I start telling myself, _I could make him happy_. It's a fool's errand. Bruce doesn't want to be happy; he doesn't  _do_  content. But when he gets prickly and silent and starts brooding in dark corners, that's when I want to be there, sliding my hands along his arms, kissing his jaw, leading him back to the place where darkness meets light.   
  
I've been leading him back there forever; it's what I'm here for.   
  
I'm here for both of them. They're both stubborn and sulky and officious, both freakishly competent, both with skin I want to lick, mouths I want to kiss and suck and bite, warmth I want to discover. A puzzle piece can sometimes fit in more than one place; I don't know where I belong.   
  
She wants it friendly and light -- all flirt and no action. She doesn't trust her body, doesn't trust that I'll want to be with her if she's not whole. She _is_ whole; I've tried to make her see that. I haven't had much luck.   
  
He wants it to be tidy, idealized. Father and son, mentor and student. It's clean-cut and honorable that way -- he could assuage his guilt, repress the way he's been staring at me since I was --   
  
\-- oh, fifteen? Younger than that? I'm not sure. Certainly since then. And no doubt the moral alarms went off in his head --  _pedophilia_  -- despite the fact that I've been doing an adult's job since I was seven, and making life-and-death decisions since I was ten. Like him, I grew up the minute my parents were murdered.   
  
Like him, I'm never going to stop reliving that minute.   
  
And I just can't let go of him. I've tried, and it's impossible. He's tried, and he couldn't do it either. We're together, inextricably. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to just accept that, move home, and start the Gotham gossip mill on a rash of Bronte jokes.  _Rent boy by day_  at least sounds like I could maybe get some damn sleep once in a while.   
  
And yet. He chose Jean-Paul to serve in my place after Bane; he tore me out of the academy for a suicide mission to Blackgate. And he says these were choices that he made out of respect -- but from where I'm sitting, it's kind of hard to tell the difference between his respect for me and his complete disregard for all things not of The Mission. He left me out of the situation with Bane because he respected my work with the Titans -- but he didn't respect me enough to pick up a phone?   
  
Oh, we've hashed it out. I still don't know who won that one. As for Blackgate, I admit that part of me was pleased to do it -- he needed the help and I was the only one he had. And to hear him admit that he couldn't have done as good a job -- that was something. That was  _arrival_. Of course, then he shut up like a clam and didn't say anything that wasn't on the job for the better part of a month.   
  
Barbara at least lets her hair down occasionally. Little bits of it. On alternate blue moons.   
  
Like I said, I have a type.   
  
It's getting to the point where I'm going to have to decide what I want. They're not either of them the sharing type (although, let's pause just a moment to savor that mental image). Barbara, with her old movies and her homemade soup and her obsessively organized drawers. Bruce with his week-long broods and his designer cologne and his haunted library. Both of them given to moods and obsessions -- minds utterly reliable, but emotions different almost every night.   
  
Barbara's the right choice. Bruce doesn't want this, not really; he's pushing me away, and I can handle only so much rejection. And I've always gone where he's pushed me, if I could see that he was making sense.   
  
And yet. 

**Author's Note:**

> I think what always drew me to Dick (heh) back in the _Gotham Knights_ run was the way that he was poised so effortlessly between Babs and Bruce. Their relationship marked my first attempt to address my bulletproof, ironclad, kevlar-wearing threesome kink. In this story, I just sort of asked Dick what he wanted and let him ramble on about it. 
> 
> It's not the sort of monologue piece I would write now -- probably because I know better, having seen many more of them attempted over time. 
> 
> I think this is one of the stories I wrote on a napkin during the overnight temp job, as I don't remember writing it. (It's a long story, but basically I came out of a fairly dark period with a pile of Batfic scribbled on napkins, much of which got transcribed for your viewing pleasure.)


End file.
